


control

by badgerterritory



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4751471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerterritory/pseuds/badgerterritory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>how a rose gets her thorns.</p><p>(or, the mysterious past of white rose.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	control

**Author's Note:**

> i love white rose and she deserves so much better

She’s half-feral when it happens, dodging cops and social workers. She doesn’t want to go back to that place. She doesn’t want to live with people who hate her. She wants to live. She falls trying to get up to a fire escape, to steal something to sell to buy food.

Other than a single noise when her arm breaks, she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t. She doesn’t know a place that will help her without asking questions, so after a quick search on a public computer, she tries to set it herself in an alley. Which doesn’t go well, she has to admit. She’s in the middle of her second attempt when she hears, “And what do you think you’re doing?”

She freezes. Standing over her is a Chinese woman, tall and rail-thin. Pale. She has a rose clipped to her jacket. She has two Chinese men behind her. One of them looks concerned. The other looks bored. “What’s your name?” the woman asks.

It takes her a frantic few seconds to come up with a name. “Rose,” she says, lifting her chin, daring this woman or her companions to defy her. But the woman simply smiles faintly.

“Come,” she says, motioning her fingers. “You had to know that this wouldn’t work. You’re wasting time. And if there’s one thing I cannot abide, it’s that. I’ll take you to a clinic where questions won’t be asked if you don’t want them to.”

Rose hesitates. The woman motions again. “I do not have all day for this. I made time because I was curious. But curiosity only takes one so far, and I have things to do.”

Rose gets up.

/              /              /              /              /

The woman takes Rose with her after the clinic. She tells Rose that if she interrupts or makes trouble, she’ll be left on the streets again. She buys Rose a dress, the nicer sort, and shoes. They don’t fit well, but they don’t have much time.

Her benefactor calls herself Whitefang. Rose calls her White for short, and she doesn’t seem to mind, so Rose sticks with it. Rose knows it’s not her real name, but whatever her real name is, White’s not eager to share it.

They meet with people. White schedules her meetings to the minute, and Rose watches. It makes things incredibly efficient, she sees. She likes it. She prefers it to the cruel chaos of her foster home. And White is kind, in her own way. Rose learns quickly that she does not abide people wasting her time. She doesn’t understand much of what gets discussed, but she understands that much.

When all the meetings are done, Rose says, “I want you to teach me.”

White barely spares her a glance. “Teach you what?”

Rose blanks for a second. She actually hadn’t thought farther than wanting to stay with White. “Anything,” she says eventually. “Everything.”

White smiles.

/              /              /              /              /

She learns computers first. “There’s no way to use a computer if you don’t know computers,” is White’s creed. Only an hour is spared for lessons every day, but Rose wants to do well. She studies as often as she can. Sometimes, others will come and tell her things, or help her. She doesn’t know who these others are, except that they are all Chinese, and all associates of White. One day, she learns that she’s going to get a tutor, who will teach her all the things she would normally learn in school, including Chinese.

Language lessons come first. Rose learns Mandarin, and she enjoys it. She doesn’t remember much of her childhood, but she remembers her mother singing to her in Mandarin. Then she learns more things. They keep it at a steady pace, never overwhelming her, and she discovers a voracious love of learning. (Voracious is a word she learns and enjoys.) White takes her to China for the first time on her twelfth birthday, and they stay there for two years before returning to America.

On her fifteenth birthday, Rose finally learns what White does.

/              /              /              /              /

Her dysphoria peaks when she’s sixteen. Rose doesn’t have the word for it until she sneaks onto White’s computer to look for it. After that, she curls up in her room and cries. Hating herself, absolutely. When White finds her, Rose gets roughly pulled up and placed in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself,” White says. When Rose tries to look away, White forces her face back to the mirror. “Look,” she says again, and Rose is so used to obeying that she does. A fresh wave of loathing washes over her. Gentler now, White says, “There’s no time for shame. You see this body? It’s what you have. Now you decide what it is, and what you do with it. Shame wastes time spent better elsewhere.”

It comforts her, in a strange way. She finds things in her room after that, set just inside. Things that ease her dysphoria. She knows they’re from White, but White doesn’t say anything, and Rose doesn’t either.

She’s too busy learning to code.

/              /              /              /              /

She learns how to hack. It’s fascinating. It’s a dance of intelligence and care, figuring out what to set up, and how, and when. What actions to take, and how, and when. Hacking people is easy; passwords are typically simple. Larger hacks fascinate her.

She learns how to hack time, as White calls it, as well. Within the normal chaos of life, there are systems, and Rose learns them. She learns to schedule conversations to the second. She thinks of all the time she wasted on her own, running away from her problems, and vows never to waste her time like that again.

/              /              /              /              /

White dies, and Rose learns how much she cared for her. How much Rose cared for White, and how much White cared for her. She owned an apartment building that she left to Rose; apparently, she adopted Rose and never told her. And so Rose doesn’t have to worry about being homeless again.

And, with White dead, someone else steps into command of Dark Army. Rose has a place with them on her own merit. She knows hardware, and she knows hacking, and she’s one of their most efficient people. She takes a handle: White Rose.

Within two years, she has command of the Dark Army.


End file.
